ABSTRACT
We examine how visual technologies fuse with techno-utopianism to affect the uptake of visual messages, and how that process can sometimes fail to carry out our best intentions. By looking at both the political economy of vision technology and its effect in the world, as well as contemporary applications of Augmented Reality (AR), the chapter highlights how cultural change around visuality may be projected as a trend for the future. We consider the possibility and politics of the “surveillance state” through the widespread use of recording and facial recognition technology, in connection with Foucault's concept of the Panopticon. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the history of astronomy as an evolving technology of visualization.
